Unrivaled is on a path to bring the way tabletop tournaments are played to the next level. The Tournament Series 2017 starts in satellite locations, like Fanfare, where participants (aged 13+) vie for advancement to Regional Tournaments and ultimately to the Finals, which will be held in Las Vegas and will award $10,000 to the winner of each of the six games. Integrating with oomba.com, a platform for planning, organizing and running tournaments for many types of games, Unrivaled hopes to transform how stores and other venues administer gaming events.

The next Kaladesh events will be the two Friday Night Magic events at 5:00 pm on Friday, September 30th. We will hold both a Standard Constructed event and a Booster Draft event (each player receiving 3 packs of Kaladesh with which to build a 40 card deck). These events do not require registration.

Our third type of event will be a Sealed Deck, Two-Headed Giant tournament at Noon on Saturday, October 1st.
This event does not require registration.

The final event for Kaladesh will be the Standard Constructed Game Day, held on Saturday, October 22nd.
This event does not require registration.

The next Eldritch Moon events will be the two Friday Night Magic events at 5:00 pm on Friday, July 22nd. We will hold both a Standard Constructed event and a Booster Draft event (each player receiving 3 packs of Eldritch Moon with which to build a 40 card deck). These events do not require registration.

Our third type of event will be a Sealed Deck, Two-Headed Giant tournament at Noon on Saturday, July 23rd. This event does not require registration.

The final event for Eldritch Moon will be the Standard Constructed Game Day, held on Saturday, August 13th. This event does not require registration.

Fanfare is once again participating in Kalamazoo’s Where’s Waldo event, hosted byBookbug? Your favorite bespectacled, stripey cartoon character will be hiding in twenty-five different local businesses, including Fanfare, for the month of July. Bookbug will have prizes for those who spot him around the town.

“Find Waldo Local in Kalamazoo!” passports list off the businesses where Waldo is hiding. You can get yours at Fanfare or any other participationg location. The first 125 Waldo seekers to get their passports stamped or signed at ten or more sites can bring their passports back to Bookbug to collect prizes. Collecting store stamps or signatures at twenty or more businesses will entitle diligent seekers to entry in a grand prize drawing on July 29th, with the top prize being a 6-volume deluxe set of Waldo books. For more information about hunting for Waldo in Kalamazoo, callBookbug at 269-385-2847.

The Battle for Zendikar begins this month. Attend our events and either aid the forces led by Gideon and Nissa or aid the unknowable Eldrazi as they consume all.

Pre-Release events are on the weekend of September 25th – 27th. The first will be at Midnight on Friday, September 25th. The second will be at 10:00 am on Saturday, September 26th. The third will be at 10:00 am on Sunday, September 27th. All of these events have limited seating and registration is recommended (details about how our new calendar handles registration click here). Starting with Battle for Zendikar we will be using a new prizing format for our Midnight and Sunday events. These events will last for 4 rounds. Each player will win one Battle for Zendikar pack for each round they score a match win. Even if you win no matches, you will win one pack. Our Saturday event will prize out as before, based on attendance and with first place winning a Sealed Box of Battle for Zendikar.

The next Battle for Zendikar events will be the two Friday Night Magic events at 5:00 pm on Friday, October 2nd. We will hold both a Standard Constructed event and a Booster Draft event (each player receiving 3 packs of Origins with which to build a 40 card deck). These events do not require registration.

Our third type of event will be a Sealed Deck, Two-Headed Giant tournament at Noon on Saturday, October 3rd. Registration is recommended for this event.

The next Origins events will be the two Friday Night Magic events at 5:00 pm on Friday, July 17th. We will hold both a Standard Constructed event and a Booster Draft event (each player receiving 3 packs of Origins with which to build a 40 card deck). These events do not require registration.

Our last event will be a Sealed Deck, Two-Headed Giant tournament at Noon on Saturday, July 18th. Registration is recommended for this event.

HOW TO REGISTER

Our new calendar handles registration by “selling” tickets to our events. We have set up all of our events to have the means of payment as “pay at the door”. In other words, you don’t have to put in credit card or Paypal information. Merely enter a little contact information and put the selected ticket in your cart. When you check out you will only have the option to pay at the door and will receive an email confirmation of your registration (as will we). If you are going to be signing up for many of our events in the future, you might consider creating a login account for yourself to save the bother of filling in all of that information each time. If you register and need to cancel, just give us a quick call or email and we’ll put your ticket back into circulation, no worries. If you have any questions about this process, feel free to call us at 269-349-8866.

Fanfare is once again participating in Kalamazoo’s Where’s Waldo event, hosted byBookbug? Your favorite bespectacled, stripey cartoon character will be hiding in twenty-five different local businesses, including Fanfare, for the month of July. Bookbug will have prizes for those who spot him around the town.

“Find Waldo Local in Kalamazoo!” passports list off the businesses where Waldo is hiding. You can get yours at Fanfare or any other participationg location. The first 100 Waldo seekers to get their passports stamped or signed at ten or more sites can bring their passports back to Bookbug to collect prizes. Collecting store stamps or signatures at twenty or more businesses will entitle diligent seekers to entry in a grand prize drawing on July 31, with the top prize being a 6-volume deluxe set of Waldo books. For more information about hunting for Waldo in Kalamazoo, callBookbug at 269-385-2847.

Based on the 2013 Marvel Crossover Storyline, The Age of Ultron Organized Play event puts you into the events of this epic story. Rid the world of Avengers and wipe out humanity. Help the Avengers travel into the past and stop Hank Pym from creating Ultron. Travel to the future to stop Ultron from concurring the world.

The Marvel HeroClix: Age of Ultron is a four-month storyline Organized Play event that introduces a new resource (The Avengers Round Table) to help players new and old alike fight against (or for) Ultron and his army of robots.

What you are about to read is a verbatim re-typing of my contribution to the Four Corners: Regional Retail Advisor Reports article in Scrye Magazine #1, from June of 1994 (although I’d have written this sometime in early May). I’d have changed names to protect the innocent but the only name is mine and I’m far from innocent in this event. I’ve made every effort to maintain formatting but have added hyperlinks (which didn’t exist back then and besides, this was a print magazine). While typing this into this post I noticed LOTS of grammatical errors, primarily involving extra commas. Feel free to comment in any way but bear in mind that I’ve matured a bit since then. Also of note is that I include our store information as it was then and so most of this information has changed (including that they have our phone number dead wrong).

Hello from Kalamazoo, Michigan. The latest news here on Collectible Card Games is that there is still only one: Magic: The Gathering. This will not likely be the case when next I write. However, for now, Magic is the only game in town. Ultimately, I would not be upset if it were always the only game of its type, but it is apparent that a virtual flood is coming and so, since variety if the spice of life, I will be there watching and playing all of them.

The Collector’s Market

Actually, there does not seem to be much of a Collector’s market in Michigan. From all of the people I have talked to, even as far away as Ann Arbor and Traverse City, very few people here seem to be buying the cards for purely collectible purposes. We do have a dozen or so customers who put sets together, but they are the exception, not the rule. If the card is not worth playing with, it does not sell well as a single and it does not matter whether it is an Alpha, Beta or whatever. We seem to have a strong Player’s Market… Pure and simple.

For this reason, my store has put all of the Alpha run away. Unless someone ask for them specifically, they are not out for sale. This move was made in the anticipation that eventually the Alphas will become a treasure, even here, and when that happens we want to have something to offer. The selection, when I compare it to the quickly depleted selection in our Revised Singles, is still quite good. Hopefully we will eventually gain some collectors, but for now I am willing to be patient.

My store has sold Sports Cards for years, in packs and as singles. When Magic was released, it was an easy step to sell singles of these as well. We have had singles available for Magic for as long as we have been selling the packs. In fact, there were times when singles were all we had. I am happy to say that this is not the case any longer. We keep a binder with nine-pocket pages numbered to keep track of the singles on our price list. We only keep up to five of any card in a pocket, at any time. I place the extras aside. I then take all of these excess cards and make up Spell Packs. They usually contain between 12 and 24 spells, with no duplication in any pack. The packs are usually common cards, but there are occasionally uncommon cards mixed in. The price per card usually works out to be between 10 and 20 cents. These Spell Packs sell really well for us and keep us from having to keep track of back-up for the singles binder. The extra Land cards are treated in the same way, but are not a random selection. I bundle them either as ten of the same type of Land, or as two each of the five types of Land. I sell these for $1.75, at a steady pace.

The Fanfare Magic League

At the time of writing this article, the Fanfare Magic League has met twice. On each occasion, the event (which is held on Sunday) has drummed up much interest in the game. It is easy to see that twenty people, all crammed into the front of the store and all playing the same game, might turn some heads. We have nine teams of three players each, in the League. Each player must play doubles against each team twice. We are going to be awarding trophies for the top finishers and expect the league to last most of the way through Summer. The store team, Terror Inc., is currently in Second Place (although we are ineligible for the prizes) and I am ranked Seventh.

I am excited about the arrival of Legends and look forward to writing about all of the amazing developments. See you in Issue #2.